Finding his team trailing by double digits, 29-41, at halftime of Friday’s semifinal after a strangely sloppy opening two quarters against a determined AS Monaco, you might have expected Olympiacos Piraeus coach Georgios Bartzokas to react by giving his players a rousing – perhaps even angry – halftime locker room speech.
But the opposite actually happened. Instead of getting into the faces of his team with a display of old-school disciplinary motivation, Bartzokas showed exactly why he is the back-to-back winner of the Alexander Gomselsky Coach of the Year award by keeping his cool...and telling his players to do the same.
During his on-court EuroLeague TV interview with Jiri Zidek moments before the third quarter began, Bartzokas gave a clear insight into how he had spent the previous few minutes with his roster, saying: “We need to calm down to play our game, be more patient in offense."
Within seconds of the restart that new-found calmness and patience was in full view, as Thomas Walkup waited for the opening play of the third quarter to develop before dishing a pass to the cutting Sasha Vezenkov to score, setting the tone for a record-breaking 27-2 third-quarter run.
And after the game, Bartzokas reiterated that staying cool under the pressure of the situation was key, confirming that his locker room speech was a very relaxed affair.
"It was a completely calm discussion," he revealed. "I said: 'Listen guys, we have to calm down.' In the first half, we missed 9 free throws, 2 or 3 layups and a lot of open shots, So we had to calm down to play our game. This was the basic conversation."
That 'basic conversation' worked wonders as Olympiacos hit the ground running to grab a game-winning lead, and Bartzokas further explained how his team turned things around.
"It was very obvious what happened," he said. "We were really nervous in the first half. Sometimes we rushed and didn’t read situations as well as we should. On defense we allowed their ball handlers to touch the paint with dribbling, which is their main target, to attack the paint. Our defense was focused on this but we still made this mistake a lot of times."
Rather than tactical tweaks, though, the Reds’ boss emphasized that his team’s improvement was mental rather than technical, adding: "We discussed a bit, we changed a few things, but basically we showed some support to the players. We realized that we were nervous and we had to calm down. I told the players, ‘Let’s try to keep it a tight score in the third quarter and we’ll have a chance in the fourth’. But finally, it was a really dominating performance in the third quarter.
“Our defense was solid, we didn’t allow anything easy for Monaco, and we took confidence from this – grabbing rebounds, hitting on transition, moving the ball and finding the open man. We made 2 or 3 three-pointers, and then the confidence was on our side and the pressure was on Monaco."
That phase of the game certainly changed the outcome, and Bartzokas was also eager to underline the importance of defense as he said: "If you are loose on defense, you cannot find rhythm on offense. You gain confidence from every possession. I really believe that at both ends you need to be really good."
In the third quarter on Friday, Olympiacos wasn’t just really good...it was pretty much perfect.